The Lifeboat Clique (18 page)

ANOTHER WEEK PASSED. I CAUGHT THREE MORE FISH WITH
my homemade hook before it broke and we again were out of options. The water supply was running low, and we continued to drift.

We were like starfish, neither dead nor alive.

I was the only one who wouldn't give up. The others slumped under the crippled sunshade, but I stood watch, scanning the horizon, the sky, moving the mirror back and forth. Hoping for a sign, for anything. I had always thought my passion was for filmmaking. Now I realized my true talent was surviving. I wondered, if by some
outside chance we were rescued, how I could turn that into a career in the real world.

Abigail seemed to be worse off than the rest of us. She spent most of her time sleeping, and when she awoke, she thought she saw Mr. Shriek standing on the rail.

“Mr. Shriek,” she would mumble. “You did it. You did it. You vamoosed from that terrible cage. I knew you had it in you, cowboy.”

Abigail and I weren't friends, or enemies. We just lived side by side, there in that briny-smelling boat, too busy watching our own bodies give up on us to remember why and how we'd given up on each other. The act of dying at sea, I was coming to realize, was a long and tortuous one. It takes quite a while for the body to quit. It's a trooper, and it has unrealistic expectations of survival. The heart keeps on beating and beating, almost to the point that it gets annoying, like Trevor's drumming.

I had a brief, sudden memory of Abigail coming up to my locker one time in eighth grade, her body trembling with excitement, her breath smelling of the strawberry lemonade we'd had in the cafeteria.

“You know how when you go under the covers and after a while it starts feeling hard to breathe, and then you come out and breathe the air in the room and it's so cold
and pure? Maybe we could
bottle that feeling
!”

What had happened to that girl? What had happened to me?

I slept a lot. My hand was growing weaker as it held the mirror to the light, and I wondered if its signal, once a shout, had become a pleading whisper.

THE DAY WAS
like any other day in our slowly fading world. The sun still high in the sky. A salty sea breeze coming over us. Not a soul in sight. Just an empty sea. But I kept scanning, kept watching, as the other girls slept and my eyelids grew heavy. The rocking of the boat, before I knew it, lulled me to sleep.

I was jarred awake by the sudden thud of the boat striking something. As I rubbed my eyes, I heard seabirds.

We had hit land. Some kind of island with a broad beach, scattered dunes, and a forest of looming palms and other trees I could not identify.

“Hey!” I said. “Hey! Wake up!”

The others slowly roused themselves.

“What?” asked Sienna.

“We've hit land!”

Sienna and Hayley got up shakily and looked over the rail. “So we're saved?” Hayley asked weakly.

“Not exactly. But there might be water on the island. Water and food.”

Abigail sat up but remained on the carpet. She wasn't looking so good. I touched her shoulder. “Abigail. We're on land.”

She could barely open her eyes. “Mr. Shriek says, ‘Who cares?'”

I looked at Sienna and Hayley. “Stay with her while I secure the boat.”

The rope was coiled up at the bottom of a hatch. I grabbed it and tied it to a rail, then climbed down the ladder, moving into the water and finding sand about three feet down, the first solid ground I had touched in many days.

I started wading to the shore, but my knees suddenly gave out, and I collapsed in the water. I stood up shakily, fighting for balance. I was so weak, and having been at sea for so long, I wasn't used to my land legs. I struggled to shore and secured the rope around a big rock sitting about ten feet from the shoreline. Sienna and Hayley watched me quietly. There really wasn't much left of them, or Abigail, or me. This island might be our savior, or we might die here.

I signaled to them that I had to rest a minute and
flopped on the warm beach, breathing heavily and hugging my knees. A sand crab crawled toward a dune. Seabirds hunted in the shallows. Palm trees waved. And I couldn't help but marvel at the gifts of dry land. That solid feel where you can be among things that are growing. Things with roots. An island was like a giant anchor in the sea. There had to be water here. There had to be food.

I'd wrestle down and eat one of those seabirds if I had to. I'd eat that crab, the flower I saw blooming on the dune, the bark off the trees. I was that hungry.

When I had recovered enough strength to rise, I staggered back into the water and made my way to the boat.

“Okay,” I told Sienna and Hayley, “it's gonna be real hard for you to use your legs. I need you guys to get Abigail to the back of the boat and hand her to me. Then, once we're safely ashore, I'll come back and guide you. We've got to do this slowly and carefully. Okay?”

They nodded. Their eyes were dull. Time was running out for us.

“Okay. Now, Hayley, you take her under the arms and, Sienna, you take her feet. Don't drop her.”

They finally got Abigail, who was still mumbling about Mr. Shriek, over the back of the boat and into my arms. Her body was surprisingly light as I lowered it into the water and then tugged my friend to shore.

I got her past the lapping waves and up onto dry sand, where I laid her down and dropped beside her, huffing and puffing.

“You okay, Abigail?”

“Water.”

“I know.”

With considerable staggering and falling, the other two joined us, and we dragged Abigail to the shade of a giant palm tree near the beach. Her body was limp, her breath coming shallow and fast. All my anger at her was gone. How could I be angry when she looked so ill and defenseless?

“Hold on, Abigail,” I said. “You're gonna make it.”

We retrieved our supplies from the boat. We were weak and starving and thirsty and moving in slow motion, but we did it. I motioned for Sienna and Hayley to follow me. They obeyed me without any protest. I was thankful, because I had seen an entire Bear Grylls marathon one weekend when everyone else was partying in Cabo, and I was eager to try something. I led them to a place on the beach a few yards up from where the waves lapped. I opened Trevor's pocketknife and gave it to Sienna. “Take those sticks and dig a hole right here,” I said. “The water under the sand is a combination of fresh and salt water. If this works, both fresh and salt water will fill the hole. And,
since fresh water is less dense than salt water, it will rise to the top, and we can skim it off. In theory, at least.”

Hayley looked at me with true awe. “You are the smartest person I know,” she said.

“I'm so thirsty,” Sienna said.

“Then dig,” I said. “I'm gonna go into the jungle before the sun sets and look for water. We've got to help Abigail. She's looking pretty bad.”

I took the nearly empty gallon jug and headed into the forest. As I moved through it, the trees blocked out the sky and left the forest dark and cool. I wasn't sure where I was heading, but I knew that some islands contained water sources, and I was determined to find one.

I had to stop every few feet and lean against a tree to catch my breath. The ground became slightly higher, and I reached what looked like a rock cliff that went up about twenty feet. I took off my shirt and fashioned a sling for the jug, put the sling over one shoulder, and slowly began to climb, afraid I was going to lose my grip and fall. But something told me to keep going and so I did, clinging on to the places where the rock had eroded away as I inched my way up.

Just when I felt I was too dizzy to go on, I found the entry to what looked like a cave. It was pitch-black inside. I wondered what kind of beasts it guarded, but I
didn't have the time or the strength to worry, so I crawled through the opening, which I judged to be about four feet in diameter, and into the darkness. Clutching the water jug, I inched forward, turning around to see where the light came through the opening to keep myself oriented. I tried to count my paces, remembering each time I moved one hand, then the other, one knee, then the other.

I counted twenty, thirty . . . then froze. I had heard a sound.

Dripping.

Water. Invisible in the darkness, splashing onto the rocks of the cave floor.

I could see nothing, but I held out my hand, moving it in the darkness until the water hit my palm. A steady drizzle. I positioned myself so that it ran into my mouth and gulped greedily.

Beautiful water. Cool and reeking faintly of organic matter and minerals and possibly bat shit. The most astonishing nectar in the world. I knew I wasn't supposed to drink too much at once, but I couldn't help myself. I drank in pitch-darkness, on my knees, as the water splashed on my face and in my hair. It was like a PG-rated rap video for a song called “Shipwreck,” and the only thing that tore me away from that miraculous trickle was the thought that Abigail needed it more than I did.

I filled the jug and made my way very carefully down the cliff and put my shirt back on. It took longer to make the return trip because I was lugging a gallon of water. But just my brief, gulping drink had made me feel remarkably restored, as if right now, every organ in my body was shouting to the next:
We're going to live! Pass it on!

Darkness was falling when I emerged from the forest and found Abigail still slumped under the palm tree, just as I had left her. Hayley and Sienna were hard at work digging in the sand in the near distance, and I motioned them over. As they came limping up, clearly spent by their efforts, I poured some water into an empty Spam tin and held it to Abigail's lips.

“Drink,” I said. “Just a little at a time.”

“Hey,” said Hayley, “your idea is working! The hole is filling up with water!”

“Screw that,” I said. “We've got better water now. I found it in a cave.”

Abigail had finished drinking, so I poured her a little more and handed the jug to the girls.

“Oh, my God!” Hayley screamed. “Thank you thank you thank you!”

She grabbed the jug and gulped it and then Sienna grabbed it from her and gulped too, and they grabbed and
gulped like that jug was the last boy band member in the world.

“Okay, okay, stop,” I said. “You'll make yourselves sick.” I took back the jug. “I'm gonna make another trip to the cave to get more water. Hayley, I'll need your lighter so I can see in the dark.”

Abigail just stared into space. But her eyes seemed a little clearer.

“Denver,” Sienna said with a desperate tone in her voice, “I'm so hungry.”

She was right. The slaking of my thirst had reawakened a feeling of internal famine so severe I could have eaten a belt or a shoe.

“We're going to eat,” I said.

“We are?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I have plans.”

“You always do,” said Sienna. She looked at me with something approaching gratitude. “I'm so glad you came to Abigail's party in Malibu. We needed you.”

The irony of it made me laugh, but of course it went straight over Sienna's head.

“And who knows . . . ,” she continued, “maybe when
we get back home, you can sit at our table with us. Some of the cool kids aren't coming back, and there will be more room.” A look of sudden concern crossed her face, and she hastened to add, “Of course, it wouldn't be a permanent thing or anything. Just a one-day honor to show our appreciation.”

Hayley gazed at me with hero worship. “I want to sit next to you at the table, because you are a genius, and without you, we'd all be dead.”

I flicked the lighter to make sure it still worked.

“I won't be gone long. I need you to stay here with Abigail and keep her company.”

“Keep me company,” Abigail murmured. I was feeling more encouraged about her. I hadn't heard her mention Mr. Shriek for over an hour. That invisible parrot was becoming her barometer of wellness.

I felt stronger on my second journey to the cave and the water. I had thoughts about spearing fish and building fires and shelter and spelling out
SOS
with the washed-up wood on the beach. And I was proud to be in charge of our iffy prospects of salvation. We had survived for two weeks. And we could keep on surviving until we were back in LA, picking up our lives, embracing our loved ones, and being ignored by our cats.

With much effort, I climbed back up to the cave and
used the lighter to see my way as I crawled toward the water. I hoped the flame wouldn't reveal a pair of bright glowing eyes or I wouldn't hear the breathing of some horrible, awkward-girl-eating beast coming from some dark corner.

But nothing of the sort happened. The water flowed cool and trusty into my container, and I allowed myself to drink some more.

My thoughts now turned to food. I hadn't seen any kind of fruit so far on the island, but I suspected that fish might be lurking in the shallows of the bay, and fish could be caught. Theoretically, at least.

I carried the full gallon jug back to the beach, where I shared more water with my companions. Abigail seemed a bit more alert, but I was still worried about her.

I had Hayley and Sienna help me find driftwood and brush to make a signal fire on the beach. “Tomorrow we'll find a way to get some food,” I promised. Later, we dragged fallen palm leaves under the tree for our beds and sat watching the fire we'd built. It was about twenty feet away from us, but we were close enough to feel its warmth, and it was comforting to see it looking so alive, so vital. Perhaps we could all be that way again.

“You guys go to sleep,” I said. “I'll keep the fire going.”

“Come on,” Sienna argued. “You need sleep, too. What
are the chances of a plane or a ship coming by tonight?” I noticed that her lip wasn't as curled as usual. In fact, it was moving normally.